“Vera,” Travis said. “Vera, Norman is dead.”
Vera did not answer. She turned and fought the tears.
Travis nodded at Corrina. Vera had some form of dementia. Norman had been scared she would forget where the purse was. That’s why he tried to go.
“It’s okay, Vera,” Corrina said. “We’ll take care of you.”
The lights went out. The alarm stopped.
There was screaming from all around them, no gunfire then, only screaming.
“I’ll open the drapes, maybe there will be some light from outside,” Travis said.
He stumbled to the balcony doors and pulled the floor length drapes back. Only the most vague outline of the sliding door was visible. Travis struggled to find the latch and slide the glass pane back. It was a dark night; the clouds above stood out as a dull grey glow in the blackness.
Even that tiny amount of light helped, and Travis could begin to make out shapes in the cabin as his eyes adjusted and he looked back in.
“The lights are out all over the ship. I can see a few emergency lights way above us, but that’s it. I can make out the Navy ship, they have a few lights on. I can only see the very back of it. We’d better pass the night here,” Travis said.
14
The ship had several theaters. The largest, the Royal Theater, boasted 800 luxury seats and a 1500-square foot stage, fronted by a small orchestra pit. This was the second destination Captain London had herded the refugees from the West Side pier in New York. The Goldings were among the last flooding through the six double doors at the top of the Theater.
When the Navy ship had borne upon the Festival, Lee and Jessica Golding had been on the deck. In the chaos that followed, their cabin was not an option for escape. It lay just stern of the intersection of the two ships. They could see from the crash that they were homeless. Lee had watched that ship come in right up until it tore through, and the men came over the sides.
As the torrent of refugees returning tapered off, individuals or small groups still continued to join them in the Theater. When the gunshots became louder, closer, and more frequent, Jessica Golding shut the door nearest her. Lee followed her lead and looked around for something to barricade the doors with. The seats were permanently installed, but there were drapes on the walls, hanging from six-foot wrought-iron rods. He grabbed at a drape and pulled hard, snapping the fixture holding the rod. The rod came loose, and Lee quickly slid the drape off. He brought the rod to the door. It fit through the double door handles but with its length it was difficult to angle it in. Lee Golding’s action and intensity began building a panic in the room. Others came and helped, wedging the rod against the wall, forcing it into the depression the door was set in. Around the upper ring of the Theater and down in the lower corners, the struggle was repeated as groups of three or four men frantically pushed and struggled to fit the rods across the door handles.
Lee ran onto the stage to lock the door that led out through the backstage area and dressing rooms. In the hall there he saw the man-mountain with whom he had shared the escape from New York. The grey giant was alone in the hall, still searching for a place to hide.
“My room is gone,” Adam Melville said.
“Come in here, you’ll be safe,” Lee said. “I need to lock this door.”
They walked back out to the stage. When they emerged, the room was quiet. Jessica walked to the front and sat with Lee on the stage stairs. Adam found himself a seat near the front row. The seats were enormous luxury loungers, but he was still wedged between the armrests.
They waited.
It had been just hours ago that they’d watched New York recede, feeling that though the world was ending, they were safe. Safest seats in the house. When Adam had left the deck that afternoon, he’d had a flash about that wrestler, Lee Golding. A bad feeling. He had been troubled by this thought, and determined that he would keep an eye out for the other big man. And now Lee Golding had saved him.
It was not long before there was a noise at the door to stage right.
The wave of absolute quiet spread through the room, pushed on by the noise of the shaking and banging of that door.
Lee rose from his seat and stood by the side aisle, peering around the end of the stage.
Gunfire tore through the door, tearing into the angled floor of the aisle. Those by that side of the Theater screamed and rushed out of the path. The door shook from the other side. The curtain rod, it could be seen by all, was only just barely wedged across the two handles. The five and a half feet of rod to one side of the handles was loose, and drooped to the floor. The doors shook, and then one handle snapped free of the curtain rod and the door swung open.
Enter the pirates: two men in orange prison jumpsuits.
Lee stepped back, blocking Jessica Golding behind him as the two men came into view of the full Theater. One of the men had a rifle: a Navy M16A3, demonstrated in fully-automatic mode by the gun bursts at the door. He wore a tactical vest over his jumpsuit and a Navy officer’s cap, tipped awkwardly.
“Well, well,” the man without the gun said. “the motherload of the mothership.”
“You got money. We got bullets,” the gunman said to the room. “Let’s make a deal.”
“This could take a while,” the man without the gun said, surveying the hundreds of faces.
“OK. We need a volunteer.”
Lee Golding stepped forward.
“What do you want?”
“Wait, I know you,” the man with the gun said. “Wow. I’m gonna make the Mighty Lee Golding my butler.”
Lee was pressed into service as their surrogate mugger. The gunman and the gunman’s partner would follow him up the aisle, and Lee would collect the money. For his collection, they quickly took the largest handbag from a woman near the front and dumped its contents. Lee took the bag, with the men behind him, and started his tour with Adam Melville.
“How did you ever get that ship?” Adam asked the invaders as he stood, and put his hands to his pockets.
The man without the gun’s face went queer, his eyes opened wide.
“God, man, God! The guards and staff bolted early, so by the time that ship with no crew came for us, there was just the last few sucker-guards. God set it all up!”
The man spoke so flamboyantly, he was like a man possessed, or it seemed to Lee, like a pro wrestler challenging him in an arena somewhere.
“Then,” he continued, “we had our own Navy guy to drive the boat: that’s God’s hand! And now the Mighty Lee Golding is my valet. Well, we’re getting years of bad karma reversed today.”
They had known, even in Sing Sing, what was happening around them. They knew that when the main body of guards evacuated, they were almost surely to drown in their cells. When the evacuation of prisoners finally came, the unexpected success of their uprising and of stealing the ship had driven them into a frenzy. Killing the guards and all but a few of the ship’s crew had set a new tone for all of them in this very new world. If they were violent before, they were free now.
Adam took his wallet out and passed it to Lee. Lee looked back at the men.
“Just the cash and cards,” the gunman said.
“You all been living the high life too long,” the ranting man continued, “and your own chickens are coming home to roost. Today is the Day of Big Payback, when ying becomes yang, and the hardest luck crew gets dealt a flush.”
He was high, Lee thought, and he found himself wondering how they got drugs in prison, and what drugs they had. Lee took out money and three credit cards and dropped them in the bag.
“Now frisk him,” the man with the gun said.
“What?” Lee said.
“Frisk him!” the man with the gun said, straightening the gun towards Lee and Adam.
“What for?” Lee said.
“’Cause it’s funny to me,” the man without the gun said.
The Mighty Lee Golding turned and put his arms around Adam Melville. He began to pat him around, like in the movies. His arms struggled to reach around the bulk of the other.